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Purdue goes coast to coast on recruiting trail

ORLANDO, Fla. - Don't bring up the amount of dollars that Purdue's athletic department spends on recruiting to Joe Tiller. He doesn't want to know.

"There's no way I'd want to know that. I might cry," Purdue's coach said Sunday. "We go from coast to coast."

When it comes to hitting the recruiting trails, Purdue assistants compile a travel log rivaled by few. There are players from 14 different states on the Boilermakers' postseason roster.

"I couldn't tell you the number of miles we travel in the average year, but our per diem is pretty good," assistant recruiting coordinator Bob DeBesse said. "Of course, our primary goal is to get every Division I-A player in Indiana. After that, we do spread out quite a bit."

Tiller said assistants have little choice but to recruit on a national level.

"When we came to Purdue seven years ago, we decided early on that we needed to go national with our recruiting, and the reason is our academic situation," he said. "We've got the largest engineering school in the country, and that's good. But you've always got to take the good with the bad."

According to Tiller, Purdue's stringent academic requirements have forced him to pass on several talented players, athletes who would have helped the Boilermakers contend for a championship in the Big Ten.

But he isn't complaining.

Although Purdue's academic standards are some of the the strictest in the Big Ten, the Boilermakers have successfully been able to use the school's reputation as one of the nation's leading engineering institutions to attract enough talented athletes.

"If you branch out like we have, you better have something that grabs people's attention," DeBesse said. "Plus, I think to Coach Tiller's credit, the program the last seven years has caught the eyes of some folks on the national scale. All that's done is increase our recruiting opportunities when you put that with our academic reputation."

Old ties haven't hurt either.

During his six years as the coach at Wyoming, Tiller made a concentrated effort in Texas, a pattern that continued when he took over at Purdue in 1997.

"There are some fast kids north of the Mason-Dixon Line, but there's not as many, quite frankly," Tiller said. "So, we looked south for some speed and Texas was a state we were familiar with."

Tiller's been very successful.

Sixteen current Boilermakers, including four defensive starters, are from Texas.

"It's kind of funny how it's worked out, a lot of the guys just felt comfortable coming here," linebacker Landon Johnson said. "With so many guys from so many different places it's made for a unique team chemistry, but it's worked well for us."

DeBesse agrees with Johnson, a senior from Lubbock.

"I know there are some folks who are a little more fortunate, who don't have to go very far to recruit, just because of population or what have you," DeBesse said. "Not that there isn't quality football being played in the state of Indiana. There is, look at Notre Dame. But we, like them, have had to broaden our horizons.

"It's a lot easier to name the state's we don't recruit than the ones we do."